7 Hour Sous-Vide Pork Belly

The secret is out, I love bacon! But really, most people do. Bacon is simple, smoke some pork belly, slice it and cook. But I’ve always had a love for pork belly in it’s pure form and I will often order it in restaurants.

The most common pork belly dishes you will find are braised and then seared.

Since I have a huge passion for cooking sous-vide, I wanted to take pork belly to a new level.

Sous-vide cooking allows you to cook with precision temperature for extended periods of time, helping breakdown the meat, making it perfectly tender.

The biggest trick to this recipe is to make sure the sauce is thick so that your vacuum sealer doesn’t suck the liquid into the unit and it stays with the ingredients in the bottom of the bag.

Are you ready for this?

Recipe – Photos in slider above

Ingredients: 1 ½ lbs Fresh Pork Belly 3 Star Anise 6 Slices of Ginger

Sauce/Glaze: ¼ Cup Chinese Soy Sauce 1 ½ Cups of Dark Brown Sugar

Plating: Fleur de Sel Radish

Instructions:

Fill your sous-vide vessel with water and set your immersion circulator to 176 Fahrenheit.

Trim and cut the pork belly into 3 equal sections.

In a bowl, combine the soy sauce and the dark brown sugar.

Place the 3 portions of pork belly into the bottom of a tall bag and pour in the sauce.

Place the star anise and ginger into the bag and vacuum seal.

Place the bag into the sous-vide vessel for 7 hours. Check back occasionally to make sure the water levels are still above the food.

Remove the bag from the water and cut a small hole in one of the corners.

Pour the liquid through a sieve into a pot.

Heat the sauce on high and maintain a rolling boil until the sauce thickens into a glaze.